


All or Nothing Days

by Lacanthrope



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Homeless Bucky Barnes, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-18 14:12:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11876205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacanthrope/pseuds/Lacanthrope
Summary: Sleeping rough in a big city was a shitty way to live, but Bucky knew it was better than he deserved after what he had done. What he had been asked to do and then did. He didn’t deserve the neatly-packaged leftovers from Wanda, the girl who lived in the apartment building he slept outside of, or the smokes she always shared with him. Most of all, he definitely didn’t deserve Steve, the completely fearless volunteer at St. Benedict’s, looking at Bucky the way he did. But when Wanda goes missing and the cops don’t seem to be doing anything about it, Bucky goes stumbling into the dark underbelly of the city to find her. He also happens to stumble right into Steve, who sticks his nose right where it shouldn’t go and insists on helping Bucky get to the bottom of Wanda’s disappearance. All they have to do is survive stirring up the largest criminal organization in the city and all of the unsavoury characters who come with it.





	All or Nothing Days

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys,
> 
> Here was my first attempt at a Big Bang, and holy crap, what an undertaking. Thank you to pqq for cheer-leading me to the finish line and creating some absolutely amazing art for this.
> 
> That being said, I tried to get as much done as possible but life kind of got in the way, so it's not completely done just yet. I'll be updating it with the rest ASAP.
> 
> In the mean time, enjoy!

Like most of the things Bucky had done, coming to the city had seemed like a good idea at the time. He’d been three hours deep into late-night infomercials and sitting on Becca’s couch when the idea had first come to him. Or more accurately, when the hall light had clicked on and Becca had shuffled into the living room in her dressing gown, asking in a strange voice _what are you doing Bucky?_

There hadn’t been anything wrong with what she’d asked. She’d had every right to ask her brother why he wasn’t asleep and was instead watching the third iteration of a copper frying pan being run over. But that hadn’t been what she was really asking. Even though the only thing he could see was her harsh, back-lit outline, he just knew that coupled with that strange voice would be that strange way she looked at him now. It was the way everyone looked at him since his discharge: a slight crease between their eyebrows and a small downturn of their mouths. Like he was some sad dog on an adoption commercial.

And sitting there with the TV running silently in the foreground, telling him that all he had to worry about was not being able to find his keys in his purse or his eggs sticking to his frying pan, it had just clicked. These were the problems people had here: easy, simple, and fixed with three easy installments of $9.99. Now that he was back stateside, his eggs sticking to his sister’s frying pan was a problem he did actually have. It just kind of paled in comparison to waking up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat and clutching at where his left arm used to be. Or that everyone in his life saw him as some sad dog that just needed to find the right home. Like he hadn’t done anything to deserve exactly what he’d gotten.

And now here in the city, where he thought it was really going to be different somehow, those problems did what they did best when you did something stupid instead of dealing with them: they multiplied. They festered. And they got worse. So now instead of the insulated quiet of the suburbs, there was the constant rush of noise and light from all the lives being lived on top of each other. And instead of waking up in a blind, sweaty panic in an uncomfortably soft bed, he woke up in a blind, sweaty panic tangled up in his sleeping bag under whatever awning he could find. And instead of being looked at with nervous pity and discomfort, people didn’t really look at him at all, which had really been a huge relief. At first. Now, it just made him think that he’d never really come home and maybe he was still lying in the bombed-in rubble somewhere across the ocean. And whatever this was, was what he got for being there in the first place.

That last thought dug into Bucky as he left the library and the thick, dark clouds that had been hanging over the city for the most of the week suddenly tore open. He was aware it was delusional to think the universe actually cared about his existence enough to conspire against him. But with the timing of stepping out the doors and the sky rippling open, he couldn’t help but think that there was something a little more than coincidence happening here. That, and it was easier to think there was some immeasurable, unknowable force calling the shots instead of him, tiny, mortal, and stupid, doing all of this himself.

He stood under the concrete cover of the library for a moment, watching the clouds roil over the city. There didn’t seem to be any end to the blackness and the rain would probably last most of the night and well into the next day. Wanda’s wasn’t far from here and he could probably make it there without getting completely drenched.

Already, he hated himself for thinking it. Wanda was a good kid, way too kind to be wasting her time with someone like him. Objectively he knew he probably wasn’t that much older than her, but whenever she smiled at him, handing over the neatly packaged leftovers from her serving job, he felt like some ancient, hulking creature.

Bucky ran a hand over his face. God, he was tired of himself. But that’s what he got for spending all day reading fucking Bradbury. He hadn’t eaten all day either. He didn’t most days anyways, but Wanda usually had something for him whenever he crawled his way over to her place. And now his stomach curled up unpleasantly under his ribs. He rubbed his eyes a little harder until spots exploded behind his eyes, and headed out.

Despite ducking under every available awning, roof, and canopy, puddles quickly formed in the bottom of his shoes. Every time he took a step, a thin line of water shot out of the tip and splattered onto the pavement in front of him. His hat soaked through and the rainwater ran off the tips of his hair and down his back. The only redeeming thing about the trip was the lady outside the Vietnamese grocery store who gave him a garbage bag to put over his backpack. So at least he had some dry clothes. Little victories. And he held onto that thought as he tucked his chin into his chest and pushed forward.

Wanda’s building was one of the original ones in the area but it wasn’t like the other buildings like it closer to downtown. Those ones had been re-furbished, wiring redone so the place didn’t burn down on a whim. Then someone decided that the buildings outside of the tourist areas didn’t really need the same treatment. Bucky had once accidentally taken a chunk out of one of the wooden railings; it had just peeled straight off in his grip and crumbled into a damp, paint-flecked mush in his hand. Wanda had almost killed herself laughing, cigarette smoke billowing out of her nose and from between her teeth.

Bucky turned and finally Wanda’s building was looming ugly on the horizon. He turned off the main street and ducked under the parking garage at the back of the building. The drone of the blue-white fluorescent lights overtook the muffled sound of the rain tapping at the concrete overhead. He made his way carefully to the back of the deserted garage. He’d been lucky so far that the only person who really noticed him had been Wanda. It wasn’t exactly like that was hard since people mostly ignored him anyways. Or at least tried really hard to preserve the illusion that his presence was some cosmic error and they just happened to be occupying the same space at the same time. But old habits die hard. He scanned over the beaters scattered around the lot and the deep shadows punched out against the florescence. Nothing.

He stepped behind one of the pillars and peeled off his backpack, his jacket, and the rest of the layers. They fell into a damp, shapeless pile at his feet. It would take them a long while for them to dry, but hopefully not more than the night. He slipped a dry shirt from his backpack over his head, then kicked off his wet shoes and socks and peeled off his jeans. He had a fresh pair from a shelter over on fourteenth but they were a size too small and had about a million tiny rhinestones glued onto the back pockets. He sighed and stuffed himself into them with a few grunts and a couple of hops. He left them unbuttoned and went for his sweater, which was only wet in a couple of patches around the shoulders and neck.

Clothes were kind of a trial now and with the wet parts clung together in a damp mess that made it even more impossible to get over his head. He still had his head caught somewhere inside it when a scrape of footsteps turned into the garage and stopped somewhere in front of him.

Already his mind was telling him to rip the sweater away from his face, drop into a ready stance. Just trust it and go. But he wasn’t like that anymore. Or at least he’d been trying hard not to be. So stuck between one instinct and the other, he stood frozen with his head still stuck in his sweater like a fucking moron. And he hated these moments. And they’d been happening more and more lately. The same curling, angry heat flushing over his skin, telling him to go go go. It had mostly served him well too, kept him alive. But that was over now. He was out. He was home. He had to stop. He just hadn’t figured out exactly how to do that just yet. But he wasn’t going to fix anything with his sweater over his face.

He got his brain back online and finished pulling the sweater on. Standing a few feet away was Wanda: bright, but tired eyes, long, dark hair frizzy from the rain, and a small, curious smile. There was a paper bag in one hand and a dripping umbrella in the other. She held out the bag.

“Apparently our piroshki tastes like ‘cardboard dicks’. So left with a plate of them, I asked myself, who do I know who likes both those things?”

Despite the adrenaline still shaking through his system, Bucky still managed to laugh a little and took the bag from her hands. Wanda’s smile widened, then she settled against a nearby pillar and shook out a cigarette, then offered him one. He tucked it behind his ear for later, when the hunger pangs set in.

She smelled like grease and sweat and Bucky could see the layer of grime over her face and the crumbled bits of her eye makeup flaking onto her lashes. She looked tired and not at all her age. Which Bucky didn’t know, but there was a softness to her face that made him think of his sister in her high school, eating grapefruit and flipping through magazines. But Becca didn’t have a thick Eastern European accent, or chain smoke, so, not really like Becca at all.

“Thanks”, he said. Like usual, he wanted to ask what someone as smart and kind as her is doing here with him, someone who is neither smart nor kind. She should be at university studying for some bullshit degree in quantum philosophy or something. But instead she was leaning against a pillar lighting up a cigarette and smiling kindly at him through the smoke. As like she read his mind, which he sometimes thought she actually did, she rolled her eyes and said, “eat the damn piroshki, James.”

He ate the damn piroshki. In between bites he managed to get his act together to ask about her day. Her smile got a little brighter.

“Natasha tipped me thirty dollars, so I’m getting a new pair of shoes.”

Bucky was a little surprised her flimsy sneakers hadn’t already dissolved in the rain. It was probably the grease that was still holding them together, or at least repelling the rain. It had been in the back of his mind to get her a new pair from the shelter on 49th that he had overheard some of women saying had the best stuff. But that had meant he either had to go inside, which made him ill even thinking about, or ask someone to get some for him, which was slightly less nauseating, but still had some solid footing under his list of hard noes. From the way Wanda’s eyes lit up whenever she talked about Natasha, she seemed like the kind of person who would have her life together enough to actually do something useful.

“Thirty dollars? You tell her you were saving up for some Loubotini’s?”

She snorted and cigarette smoke puffed out of her nose.

“I didn’t say anything at all. Natasha is a smart lady and she knows the goals.”

Bucky frowned for a moment in between bites of the piroshki.

“Score.”

“What?”

“She knows the score.”

Wanda rolled her eyes.

“You knew what I meant,” she took a deep inhale of her cigarette, the smiled at him again, “I also found something interesting on the subway.”

Wanda dropped down next to him and rifled through her bag. Bucky was about to tell her that she shouldn’t be picking up anything from the subway, but then she held out a ratty book to him. Bucky stared at it and wondered just what the hell was so interesting about a book that looked exactly like the kind of book you’d find abandoned on the subway. Wanda must have realized Bucky wasn’t going to touch it, so she pulled it back towards herself and flipped it open.

“It’s a diary.”

“Isn’t that what the lost and found is for?”

Wanda rolled her eyes again.

“I went there and the man was asleep, and I thought what am I going to do, let it rot on a shelf? No, someone will want this back, so I am going to find the owner and do that. But there is a problem.”

From what he could gather, Wanda liked to do things like this. She was always telling him about walking a drunk girl home, or helping one of her neighbours organize their spice rack or something. He thought in the beginning that he was one of these projects, but only a few days after meeting Wanda, he’d seen her coming out of a coffee shop with one of her friends. He didn’t want to make things awkward, so he’d tried to blend into the background and not get noticed, something he’d been getting better at. Then he’d seen a panhandler hassle her for some change. Wanda had snapped back “change comes from within, so why don’t you try that?”

So he definitely wasn’t a pity project. Wanda didn’t seem to do this kind of stuff out of pity. But whatever the reason, she was the kind of person who wanted to help people. Far be it from him to get in the way of that.

“What’s the problem?”

Wanda held the book towards him again. Bucky couldn’t quite focus on the letters. He couldn’t figure out why until he realized that it was because they weren’t in English.

“Is that… Russian?”

Wanda pulled the book back to look at it.

“Yes, I’m pretty sure. My Russian is not the best unless someone wants to order coffee.”

“Isn’t your alphabet the same though?”

Wanda straightened her shoulders and looked down her nose at Bucky, which was pretty impressive considering he had about a foot on her, even sitting down.

“Similar, but we are no Russians--”

Bucky put up his hands in surrender. “My grandma was Russian. She was a nice lady. Kind of.”

Wanda’s eyes widened.

“So you know Russian?”

“Speak it, kinda. Read it, not at all.”

Her excited look disappeared and she looked back at the ugly little book.

“I think Natasha speaks some Russian. I’ve heard her talking on her phone sometimes.”

“You think she’s going to want to translate some diary you found on the subway?”

The haughty expression made another appearance on her face.

“Why wouldn’t she? She is nice. She will help, I’m sure”, his exact thoughts on that must have somehow shown on his face because Wanda frowned at him and continued, “most people are nice James, you know that, right?”

It wasn’t a joke. He knew that. But that didn’t stop an edge of laughter creeping through him. But Wanda didn’t look like she was joking and he wasn’t about to be a dick about it.

“Yeah, sure.”

“That’s right. But you just have actually talk to them. Nobody can be nice to a ghost.”

As usual, Wanda was right on top of his bullshit.

“I’m not a ghost.”

“Name one person you talk to other than me.”

When he didn’t respond, Wanda looked him dead in the eye and grinned. It was a weird thing to get excited about. It reminded him a lot of Becca winning arguments, her huge toothy smile just rubbing it in his face. His chest grew tight and he looked back down at the takeout container in his lap. It didn’t happen often, but in moments like this he remembered how much he missed being someone who was looked at instead of looked through. But then he’d remember why he was here to begin with and that feeling died pretty quickly.

Wanda stubbed out her cigarette on the pavement between her legs and gathered her things back into her bag. She nudged Bucky’s leg with her own.

“Don’t get mopey, you’ll get wrinkles. You should start small. Go to St. Benedict’s on forty-ninth. They have good food and the staff are nice people too.”

He thought about Wanda, going through the hassle of translating a diary, bringing him food after every shift she had, how she still managed to smile so wide despite the tired lines just underneath. And then himself. What exactly had he done today? Sit in a gloomy corner of a library reading shitty pulp fiction by some dead guy. He scrubbed his hand over his face and drew in a deep breath.

“Yeah, maybe I’ll try that.”

Wanda gave him another huge smile as she stood.

“Good. You can’t live off piroshki forever. Good for the soul, bad for the heart.”

***

And Bucky did try, which was kind of horrifying in and of itself. He’d mostly accepted that all that was left for him now was some long, slow slide towards…something. But then he thought of the way Wanda looked at him, like he could actually pull himself together and not completely fuck this up and knew he had to at least try.

He waited for a gap in the rain, then he tried all the way there, all the way through the doors and even got as far as the dining hall before trying just wasn’t going to cut it. The ceiling was low and what little light there was, was an ugly, mottled yellow that spilled over everything. The heat was blasting from a dusty vent somewhere over head and Bucky could feel his lips starting to crack from the sudden change in temperature. And the people. There were people at his back, front, sides, all damp from the rain, squeezing into a crushing mass to get through the door to the dining hall. Someone shoved at his shoulder and he tripped over the heel of the woman in front of him, going down hard onto his knees. And then--

Bucky stumbled back out of St. Benedict’s dented doors, gasping and desperately trying not to pass out on the gum-stained sidewalk. He leaned heavily against the ugly cement bricks and curled in on himself. In between struggling to breathe and clinging uselessly to the brickwork, there was a barely registered spot of sudden dampness on his exposed neck. He had some fogged-out, distant thought that someone might have just spat on him. The thought floated for just a moment before the struggle to convince himself to breathe drowned it out.

But then it happened again.

And again.

Then like a flipped switch, all the sounds of the city were sucked under by the rain crashing back down in huge, slamming sheets. He forced his head up and the rain smacked into his eyes. Before he realized it, he was already on the move, ducking around the corner of the building, into the alleyway, and under the shelter of the church’s back entrance. It wasn’t much but it would be enough for him to wait out the rain. There was no way he’d be able to make it back to Wanda’s tonight, not in this weather. He’d get drenched before he even got a block away and he was out of dry clothes.

The subway was out of the question too. He could already picture the stairs cut into the ground and the flood of people trying to escape the rain. Obviously crowds were already something he couldn’t handle, let alone the endless sea of wet umbrellas and damp jackets crowding in from every corner. He groaned and sunk further against the wall. Trying to go into St. Benedict’s had already been a complete and utter failure and he didn’t think he could face up to that again any time soon. There was a small measure of relief from the coolness of the bricks against his overheated face, but only for a moment. Registering at the back of his mind was the fact that he was pretty much fucked until the weather cleared. And that he’d let Wanda down.

A few feet away, the door banged open. Bucky flinched and then reminded himself to stay still. Sometimes people didn’t mind if he was around, as long as he was non-threatening. Which meant trying to look the least like himself as possible.

“Ok, I understand that Sam, but let me remind you that it was him who threatened to stab me--“

The outraged voice was quickly followed by a skinny guy backing through the door and out onto the small raised platform of the alcove. A shitty phone was pressed against one ear and he had a plate of food piled high in one hand and a steaming cup in the other. They locked eyes for just a moment, before the guy gesture-shrugged at his phone, then continued with his conversation.

“He didn’t actually stab me though, so two completely different things. If I had been stabbed, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But since we are having this conversation, I’m gonna go ahead and say that I was completely justified—“

He stopped talking then his face pulled into a severe frown. On his face it should have looked funny, but the guy looked shockingly intense for someone who was barely over five feet. He placed his cup on a jutting-out brick and grabbed the plastic fork on the side of the plate. He stabbed it into his food a few times, but instead of putting it in his mouth, he started waving it around as he spoke again.

“No, Sam, the fact that we’re having the conversation about what I did is why I’m pissed. He shouldn’t have been doing it-- you know what, we’re talking in circles. I’m going to get a second opinion on this”

The guy snapped his gaze sharply over to Bucky. Bucky thought he should smile, look as pleasant and as ‘don’t kick me off the only dry spot on the block’ as possible, but he felt strangely pinned by the guy’s gaze. All he could do was stare back as the guy pointed at Bucky with his fork.

“Sorry to pull you into this, but I need someone to tell my friend here that when someone is _spray-painting swastikas on the side of a Mosque_ \--” that part Bucky has a feeling wasn’t being said to him, but to ‘Sam’ “—the right thing to do would be to get the guy to stop.”

It threw Bucky a little because it sounded like the guy actually wanted Bucky’s opinion in this. Like whatever he said was actually going to matter. His fork was still pointed in Bucky’s direction and the severe frown had set itself even deeper into the guy’s face the longer Bucky stayed quiet. Finally Bucky looked back at the guy and said cautiously,

“It would depend.”

“Depend on what?”

“On whether or not he threatened to stab you.”

The guy’s face scrunched up into an impossibly deeper frown. There was some kind of victorious, tinny crowing now coming from his phone. The guy stabbed his fork into what looked like potato salad and said into the phone,

“Ok, well, just because he agrees with you doesn’t mean either of you are right—“ his face scrunched up again as he fell silent, then he rolled his eyes and said “Reasonable majority doesn’t count here cause neither of you are reasonable. Just laying out the facts Sam. I know you know the guy is in the wrong, but it’s total bullshit that you’d expect me to just stand around and do nothing about it—Yeah, I could have called the cops, but they wouldn’t have gotten there in time—I know you’re at work, that’s just your excuse to get the last word—yeah yeah, I’ll try not to actually get stabbed but only if you call me back.”

The guy hung up then turned back to Bucky. He could feel the guy directing his intense stare back at him. And like some kind of invisible thread tugged at Bucky, he turned back to face him. The frown was still there but it wasn’t as deeply set anymore. Bucky would almost say the guy was trying to look friendly, but that would be a hard sell for someone with such an intense stare.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to put you on the spot like that. Sam is just too inflexible for me to handle sometimes.”

Bucky almost laughed at the way the guy said it, like not getting into situations where getting stabbed was a possibility was somehow some kind of unreasonable political stance.

Before he could stop himself, Bucky said, “I think the word you’re looking for is sensible.”

The guy’s eyes widened and Bucky wished he could take it back. Just because the guy hadn’t kicked him off the platform yet didn’t mean he still couldn’t. The last thing he needed to be doing was mouthing off. But instead of telling Bucky to fuck off, the guy grinned.

“And here I was thinking I just hung up on Sam--” then the guy switched his plate into his left hand then stuck out his right towards Bucky, “--I’m Steve by the way.”

Bucky stared at Steve’s outstretched hand and tried to pull together what exactly was happening here. He blinked back up at Steve, whose grin had set into a slightly smaller, softer look. Steve was obviously trying to be friendly and Bucky wasn’t that far gone to know he’d be a massive dick to refuse that. He felt huge and awkward as he reached over, but he tried his best to keep the eye contact as his hand completely covered Steve’s. It wasn’t like the handshake was anything out of the ordinary. Actually, it wasn’t even that great- Steve’s hand was freezing and bony in Bucky’s grip, but Bucky found his breath catching a little anyways. It hit him kind of suddenly that, outside of Wanda nudging his leg or someone shouldering by him on the street, this was the first real contact he’d had with someone outside of the hospital.

Before he could make an idiot out of himself, Bucky cleared his throat and said, “Bucky.”

Steve nodded and stepped back to sit down a few feet from away.

“Sorry about bursting out here like that, Bucky. Guess I’m still pretty pissed about the whole thing.”

He turned his attention to his plate at started viciously stabbing at the food. Steve seemed pretty happy leaving their conversation at that, but there was some little part of him was telling him to say something, anything, so Steve would look back his way.

“What ended up happening?”

Steve glanced back at him and shrugged, his skinny shoulders poking against the thick fabric of his sweater.

“Well, I told the guy to stop.”

“And?”

“Well, he definitely didn’t like that.”

“Is that when he threatened to stab you?”

Steve grinned again and said “yep”, complete with an obnoxious pop at the end.

“And?”

Steve shrugged again.

“Then I cold-cocked him.”

Bucky reassessed the guy sitting a few feet away from him. His plate of potato salad was balanced precariously on his skinny legs and Steve was now casually digging into it as if he hadn’t just told a complete stranger he’d recently cold-cocked some neo-nazi. He even chewed in a kind of semi-intense way. The surreal feeling expanded a little more and Bucky finally figured out what exactly the feeling was.

Bucky was being judgemental. And that was a strange feeling these days to be pointing outwards. Obviously Steve could hold his own, or something like that, but who the hell sits down next to some random homeless guy like they’re already friends, or doesn’t back down when someone who is obviously a terrible person threatens to stab you? Which was exactly when his stomach loudly reminded Bucky that he was in no place to be judging anyone.

Bucky felt his face flush and he curled himself away from Steve. He could just see out of the corner of his eye that Steve had turned his gaze back to Bucky. He could practically feel it boring into the side of his head.

“You know, I was gonna mention that I didn’t see you at the dinner. You know there’s one on right now, right?”

“I-“ The usual creeping ripple of shame started to prickle under his arms. Bucky cleared his throat and tried again. “--I was going to.” The ‘but’ hung unspoken in the air.

When Steve realized Bucky wasn’t going to say anything else, he said, “So you’re saying you haven’t eaten?”

“Yeah.”

“You sticking around a little longer?”

He said it like Bucky actually had somewhere to be, which was hilarious. Bucky nodded and Steve put his plate down onto the platform and stood.

“You got any allergies or anything?”

Bucky shook his head, still trying to figure out where this was going. Steve put his hand on the door handle.

“I’m not expecting you to punch anyone or anything, but think can make sure no one takes my plate?”

When Bucky nodded, Steve smiled and stepped back inside the building. Then Bucky was by himself on the loading dock. Bucky ran his hand over his face. What the hell was he doing here anyways? He really didn’t have anything to prove to Wanda. She was a smart kid, she definitely already knew how much of a fuck up he was, so really there wasn’t anything changing here. He was putting a hell of a lot of energy into proving he wasn’t exactly what he was. If Steve was smart, he’d realize the same thing. But he’d smiled at Bucky. Not the pinched fake ones people threw at him. It was more like Wanda’s. And what a bunch of shitty luck that the two people like that in this city had Bucky to keep them company.

The door banged back open and Steve was back, this time with a plate piled even higher than his own. He held it out to Bucky.

“Got lots of to-go plates left today. We usually do on rainy days since most people need a place to stay dry and all, but I think you probably picked a better place for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“You ever been inside? If the lights don’t get you, the bleach fumes will.”

Bucky thought back to the cloying air, the yellow of the lights making everyone look washed out and sallow. His own revulsion when he stared at one of the women’s faces and saw the colour completely drained from it and replaced with a sickly hue that reminded him of a corpse. Then seeing everyone else’s faces like that, hovering around him, closing in on him. He managed not to drop the plate as he lowered it to his lap and nodded.

“Yeah, not wrong there.”

Steve’s gaze went intense again. “Oh, so you have been inside?”

“Yeah but-“ Bucky breathed through it and continued, “—but I don’t do so well with all the people.”

Steve nodded like what Bucky was saying wasn’t complete bull-shit. “Yeah, I don’t do so good with all the bleach they use on everything. The fumes mess up my lungs, so I usually come out here for a break. That, and the free meal,” There was something else underneath what Steve just said, and thankfully Steve didn’t seem to be a subtle guy, “I know I don’t look like I could manage carrying two plates, but I’m actually stronger than I look.”

Bucky could already see Wanda grinning obnoxiously at him and saying see, I was right. All Bucky had to do was not fuck this up.

“Wouldn’t doubt it for a second.”

Steve’s grin came back. Bucky realized he liked that look on Steve a lot more than the furious intensity earlier. He ducked his chin down just as the heat spread across his cheeks. God, he was the worst. All it took was someone being decent to him and here he was, acting like a teenager. But even Wanda hadn’t had this effect on him. So maybe this was just a Steve thing. Jesus, he needed to get a grip.

“All you gotta do is show up.”

Steve said it like it was easy, and maybe it could be. Bucky tried to return Steve’s smile and hoped he didn’t look too deranged.

“And all you gotta do is not get stabbed.”

Steve smile turned sharp, but it still had an edge of humour in it.

“Not gonna make a promise I can’t keep. But I’ll see what I can do on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between five and six thirty.”

Bucky swallowed thickly. He suddenly felt strangely shy under Steve’s gaze, in a way he hadn’t felt since long before he deployed. There was no hiding from the way Steve was looking at him. It was kind of like Wanda, but where there was a 50/50 chance she wouldn’t call him on his shit, Steve certainly seemed like he would.

“I guess I’ll clear my calendar.”

Steve looked at him then, just the same as all the other moments in this vaguely surreal interaction and Bucky felt something pass between them. Something that warmed him from the inside, completely different than the prickling, brutal heat that he usually felt. Steve nodded.

“Well alright”

***

But just because that had gone well didn’t mean the rest of his life got the memo. Since the rain refused to let up for the rest of the day, Bucky had to resign himself to sleeping between a wall and an electrical box at the back of some office building. Or at least that was the plan. Every single sound seemed to funnel into the space, keeping him wide awake and anxious until the sun bled back into the sky. But even then it didn’t really let up, just kind of morphed into some kind of miserable fog.

Bucky blinked a few times, eyes feeling like they’d been rubbed through with sand and the strained exhaustion of staying up all night. Despite staying out of the way of the rain, his clothes were still damp enough that he shivered from the chill. He sat up and noticed a security guard watching him from inside the building. Well, not really watching, more just hovering in Bucky’s sight, and hoping the homeless guy would get a hint.

Once he was on the move he didn’t feel as cold anymore, but his clothes felt heavy, pressing his feet into the sidewalk. The streets were mostly deserted this early in the morning; the only people out were the ones who hadn’t gone home from the night before or early morning commuters. Either way, they were too focused on their falafels or coffee to really notice him. This might have been what Wanda meant when she said he was a ghost, feeling most at home in the early mornings, that time of day when the world doesn’t seem real just yet.

Eventually, he ended up under a beat-up pagoda at the edge of the city’s huge beach, watching the waves hurl themselves angrily against the shore, grey rolling into more grey. He shifted and the sand ground ugly underneath his shoes. A group of older women shuffled by him, all zipped up in rain jackets.

A few minutes after his arrival, the rain started up again in earnest. Thick drips clattered down onto the boardwalk and it sounded like a thousand fingers tapping out some kind of chaotic melody against the wood. It had rained just like this on his first official day back. He’d been sitting in the back of his sister’s G Wagon and the windshield wipers had been scraping rhythmically back and forth across the windshield. Becca had been turned around in her seat, talking to him. She looked different after the baby. Paler, a little softer, and there were fine lines around her mouth that hadn’t been there before. In his periphery, Becca’s baby’s tiny hands had been waving in his direction and reaching out towards him. And he knew this was the part where he should look at Becca, laugh at the jokes she was trying to make, maybe even hold his hand out and let the baby curl its tiny hands around his finger. But all Bucky had managed to do was stare at the back of the leather car seat and think _what the fuck am I doing here?_

That question had locked into him right then and there and he hadn’t been able to shake it since. It was in the periphery of his waking hours, and it was always there when he closed his eyes. It was a question he asked himself now.

Coming to this city had been one of the dumber ideas he’d had. It had seemed like the best idea at the time, but then again so had nodding along when Becca had said _you’re still my brother, so it’s no big deal, just stay with us_. And so had most of the things he’d done before getting shipped back. Really it was just the latest in a long, long line of good intentions leading exactly where everyone said they did.

There was a lesson in all this somewhere. Not in the grand cosmic scheme of things, but maybe it was time to accept that he had some pretty skewed perceptions on what the best and worst ideas were. Someone smarter than him would probably have figured that out a long while back. But not Bucky, so that was probably why he was standing under a shitty beach pagoda in the middle of a storm, feeling sorry for himself like he had any right to be.

He stamped his feet to stave off the chill crawling through his thin sneakers. Hanging around Wanda was already a bad idea. She was a good kid, too good for him to be leeching off. It was kind of surprising she hadn’t realized just who she was sharing her smokes with. And Steve. Steve, with his sharp intensity and even sharper smile, was absolutely the worst idea. Already Bucky could feel his cheeks growing stupidly warmer. In his mind, there was only one way it was going to go with Steve: badly.

But Bucky obviously didn’t have the monopoly on great ideas to begin with, so the least he could do was muddle his way through some grimy Russian diary for Wanda. Or show up for a plate of free food tomorrow. And if he enjoyed that for another reason, well, that would just be bonus.

Out across the beach, the waves redoubled their efforts and churned up a scattered mess of wriggling crabs onto the shoreline. Bucky curled himself tighter into his jacket.

***

Instead of hauling himself to the library, he spent most of the day eavesdropping in one of the Russian cafes near the shore. The coffee was thick and black, and he was pretty sure he could stick a spoon straight up in it. And the best part of all that it was a buck fifty and got him a table in the corner where he could overhear the entire cafe. If he closed his eyes, it was almost like he was sitting under the table in his babushka’s kitchen while she puttered around making tea. Except he had his eyes open and the woman behind the counter was definitely not making tea, but glaring at him.

By the time he made it back to Wanda’s, he could feel the snatches of Russian practically leaking out of his ears. It had mostly been old men complaining about the government, taxes, politics, but it got him back into the swing. He even allowed himself to feel cautiously optimistic that maybe, just maybe, he could help Wanda out here instead of being his usual leech-self. Of course Wanda wasn’t at the usual spot when he got there. He was probably hours early, but he hadn’t had the money for another cup of coffee and the woman behind the counter had been more than happy to tell him to leave.

So he attempted to catch up with the sleep he hadn’t gotten the night before. He only managed to get into a muddled half-rest, his skin feeling too heavy and warm. The real exhaustion went down deeper these days, and it didn’t seem like any amount of sleep was going to change that.

Sometime during that haze Wanda appeared at his feet, waving the ugly little book in one hand and a paper bag in the other. Bucky blearily tried to get his brain online while Wanda sat against the wall and flipped the book open.

“So Natasha looked at it today.”

Bucky rubbed his hand over his face a few times and sat up. His shirt was sticking uncomfortably to his back and under his arms. He probably smelled pretty rank too. He curled tightly around himself. Wanda continued, narrowing her eyes, “She says it is nothing interesting, just a silly little diary about some girl’s crushes.”

“You don’t believe her?”

Wanda chewed at her lip and scanned the pages.

“Yes and no. I can read little pieces, and I think there is some of that. But there are some other things I don’t think are that at all. Like this--” she held up one of the later pages. Some ugly, thick letters were scrawled over one of the pages, blocking out the rest of the writing underneath. Kind of like something you’d see in some crazy person’s diary, talking about little green men or lizard people taking over the planet. Not some teenage girl’s diary.

“What does it say?”

Wanda lay the book on her lap and reached into her bag for her cigarettes.

“I’m not sure. Something about eyes. I’m not sure what everything together means.”

So probably exactly what he’d been thinking. Some crazy dropped their delusional journal on the subway. But Wanda was looking at it like it wasn’t like that at all. Bucky curled tighter around himself.

“Read it out to me.”

Wanda paused digging for her lighter and looked at him in confusion.

“I thought your Russian was terrible.”

“I can’t read it, but I can kind of speak it.”

“Are you sure?”

Bucky nodded. Wanda looked at him for a moment longer before turning back to the book and reading out the thick, hastily written words. His Russian might suck, but there was no mistaking those what they meant. Wanda was now looking at him expectantly. Hopefully. Like what he was going to say would be something good and not the tip of some crazy-person iceberg.

“What exactly did Natasha say about it?”

Wanda frowned.

“Just that it wasn’t anything important or interesting and I’d be better off turning it into the lost and found.”

“How well do you know Natasha?” Wanda’s frown deepened. “She is a nice lady, always tips very well. Beni, my boss, doesn’t like her very much though. He always crosses himself in the kitchen when she comes in.”

“Why?”

Wanda shrugged, “I don’t know, he does it a lot. I think it’s because she has red hair and that makes her one of the thousand ways to have bad luck. But why are you asking all these questions? What does it say?”

Bucky looked down at his lap. There was a small hole forming in his sleeping bag. He’d lucked out finding this one, but that luck probably wasn’t going to hold out if he needed another one. Wanda snapped her fingers and Bucky looked back up at her, a strange, hard line to her face.

“Ok, so maybe you don’t tell me. Fine. But I think I know where to start looking--” She pulled out an equally ugly yellow card tucked into the back of the book. Trans-Siberian Restaurant was the only thing he could make out. “--it isn’t far from the café.”

“Wanda--” Wanda sharpened her gaze and Bucky felt pinned for a moment. It wasn’t like Steve casual intensity. Wanda leaned in close and smiled with every one of her teeth. “Or you could tell me what it says.”

Bucky blinked, surprised. He wanted to think that Wanda was acting strangely, but he had a creeping feeling that maybe this was just a side of her he hadn’t seen before. But that wasn’t quite true. He’d seen it outside that cafe when she’d snapped at the panhandler. He wasn’t quite sure where to put this information. But he’d offered to help her and what was he doing now? Protecting her? From what exactly? Some whack job’s journal?

“It’s something about nowhere being safe and that there are eyes everywhere.”

Wanda leaned away, the intense look falling off her face. Her brows pinched together as she flipped further through the book. She settled on the last page. She read out a longer passage, stumbling over a few of the words. Bucky closed his eyes. Jesus Christ.

“I don’t know exactly--”

“James.” Bucky looked back down at his lap.

“It something about the subway. How it’s the only safe place, as long as she keeps moving. There’s something about the cops, I think. They can’t be trusted because they are...eyes too.”

Wanda was quiet for a long while. So long that Bucky eventually pried his eyes up to make sure she was still there. She wasn’t looking at him though, just out at the rain.

“Wanda, I know you want to help, but I don’t think this is anything.”

Wanda still didn’t look at him, just absent-mindedly fingered the ugly yellow card still in her hand. Her jaw worked, clenching and unclenching.

“Maybe you’re right, but I think they would still want this back.”

“Yeah, ok. But they don’t sound like they want to get found.”

Wanda pulled out a cigarette and lit it with a flash of warmth flaring across her face before fading back into the pale blue light of the underground.

“Even if they are hiding from something, no one can stay like that forever. Even ghosts have to show themselves at some time-” she looked at him then, sharp, assessing, “--so how was St. Benedict’s?”

Bucky knew a conversation change when he heard one. He wasn’t sure why the whole thing made him uncomfortable, but there was some kind of small thing, deep under his skin that was telling him to grab the diary and fling it out into the rain. That thing telling him to _go go go_. But he didn’t do that anymore. And definitely not around Wanda. Bucky drew in a deep breath.

“Fine.”

Wanda looked at him through her cigarette smoke.

“And?” Bucky felt himself flush a little and duck his head.

“There was a guy, Steve. He was...nice.”

The strange intensity was suddenly gone and Wanda was back to smiling at him.

“Steve. He is new?”

“I don’t know. How would you know if he was?"

Wanda shrugged then said, “What’s he like?”

It had been an unspoken kind of agreement when they started whatever the hell this was that they didn’t really talk about anything past surface level stuff. Wanda knew he he’d been in the war, and he knew she’d ended up in here at some point in the past year or so, probably because of the war. Everything else was just chatter that lasted as long as Wanda’s cigarette.

“He’s...nice. Kind of intense.”

“So like you then.”

Bucky gave her a flat look.

“I’m not intense.”

Wanda rolled her eyes and gestured at him.

“When we met, you were just standing in the dark staring at me like a weirdo. It was very intense.”

It had been the second night he’d stayed there. When he’d seen Wanda, he’d frozen like an idiot, thinking (hoping) that if he just stayed still that maybe she wouldn't see him. But obviously one of them hadn’t been operating on the laws of the jungle, so Wanda had just looked straight at him, then offered him a cigarette.

“You startled me.”

Wanda waved her hand in the air,

“Sure sure, you say. You were all huge and sad in your shadow. Very intense. So Steve is big and sad too?”

Bucky ignored that dig and thought about Steve instead. How he’d barely come up to Bucky’s shoulder and how his skinny wrists poked out of his huge sweater.

“No.”

“Ah, good balance. It’s good for friends to be like that.”

“We’re not friends.”

“Sure sure, _yet_ —“ Bucky opened his mouth to argue but she waved her hand out to stop him, “—Good things happen to people all the time. And sometimes they can happen to you.” She looked at him with the same kind of intensity as earlier but there was something fiercer behind it. Like if she stared at him hard enough he’d start believing it too. “And you’ll see. This will be a good thing.”

And maybe there was something to what she was doing after all, because Bucky thought about the sharpness of Steve’s smile and the way his gaze leveled something in Bucky. And how much he missed being looked at like that. Bucky nodded.

“Yeah, ok.”

***

And the next day Bucky was at the back of St. Benedict’s thinking about what Wanda had said when the door banged open. There was Steve as Bucky had seen him last time: his floppy bangs falling over his eyes and a smile curling across his face. But there was something different too. Bucky felt his own small smile just kind of die right across his face. Different today was: the black eye and a split lip. Steve’s own smile turned down too, pulling at the split in his lip.

“Hey, you ok?”

Bucky could feel himself staring and knew he should probably stop. It wasn’t exactly like he’d never seen someone’s face get rearranged before, but against Steve’s pale skin, the deep purpling bruises looked harsh and vicious. Already there was an angry heat prickling under his skin.

“Are you?” Steve seemed like he’d forgotten the obvious shit-kicking he’d recently received

“Oh, you mean this--” he vaguely circled his face with one of the plates, “—it’s nothing.”

“Doesn’t look like it.”

Steve stared at him a little longer, and Bucky could feel the build up of that strange mix of intensity and earnestness that Steve just seemed to radiate all over the place. But it kind of lost its effect when he couldn’t look out of one of his puffed-up eyes. Steve then held up a plate of spaghetti and red sauce in Bucky’s face.

“So, dinner?”

And Bucky knew a conversation change when it was spitting at his face. But it had never said he was a smart guy. Bucky leaned around the plate to look at Steve.

“What happened?”

Steve moved the plate again and Bucky was back facing the spaghetti.

“Some assholes are what happened. I thought I came here to hand out some free food, not a round of 21 questions.”

And that stung a little. Some small part of him had latched onto what Wanda had said. That this was going to be good. But maybe there was some kind of translation error there, because Bucky certainly wasn’t feeling like it was going that way. But then again, Steve wasn’t Wanda. Steve was kind of a little shit. So maybe Wanda had been right about them having some things in common. Bucky took the plate.

“Both. Can’t get dinner if you’re lying in a dumpster somewhere.”

Steve looked surprised for all of half a second before the smallest of shit-eating grins made an appearance.

“Dumpsters are amateur hour, Buck. I haven’t been in a dumpster since high school.”

“I don’t know if that’s better or worse.”

Steve shrugged and sat next to Bucky with his own plate.

“Takes a lot of effort to chuck someone in a dumpster. The classic, timeless option is leaving them lying on the ground coughing up their ribs.”

Obviously Bucky couldn’t tell if there was anything actually wrong with Steve’s ribs, but not even someone as obviously stubborn as Steve could brush off a set of broken ribs. Still, a cold thread pulled at his gut.

“Is that what happened?”

Steve stabbed viciously at his spaghetti and started twirling it around the plastic fork.

“Nah. Just got a shiner and a fat lip. Kind of amateur hour too I guess.”

From the way this conversation was going, Buck got the feeling that Steve got himself into a lot of shit on a pretty regular basis. He had a strange thought that small, skinny Steve would be better off wrapped in a couple layers of bubble wrap or something. But then again, even if Steve kind of looked like a kid, he definitely wasn’t one. If he wanted to get the shit kicked out of himself on a somewhat regular basis, then that was his call. But still, Bucky couldn’t help asking quietly, “what happened Steve?”

And maybe it was the fact that Steve now had some food in his stomach or that Bucky had used his name because the intensity kicked up a couple of notches and his face flushed into a blotchy, angry red.

“This girl on the subway was just minding her own business and then these two assholes swooped in and started hassling her. And then one of them tried to grab her. I don’t think they even noticed I was there too until I kicked one of them in the balls.”

Bucky blinked a little at that.

“What.”

Steve stabbed at his noodles again.

“They definitely noticed me a lot more after that. We were pretty close to the next stop so the girl booked it and they didn’t really realize it until she was gone gone.”

“Because they were too busy punching you.”

“Hey, I said I wasn’t going to get stabbed, so technically, I’m still in the clear on this.”

Bucky couldn’t help a small snort escaping.

“I don’t think that clears you for getting the shit kicked out of you.”

“Getting punched in the face a couple of times doesn’t even come close to that, Buck.”

“What else would you call it?”

“I dunno, Friday night? Except it was a Monday, so—“ Steve shrugged his bony shoulders.

Bucky shook his head. “Jesus.”

“Hey, when I see something going south, I’m not just gonna stand by and watch it go that way, you know? A lot of bad gets done in the world because people are standing around watching it happen.”

It was just a throw away comment. But Bucky couldn’t help but the last few words felt like they stapled themselves into his gut.

“I guess that makes you lucky.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever said that about me.”

“If you can punch your problems, that’s pretty lucky.”

Steve laughed at that. “Oh man, I wish, but it’s kind of hard to punch yourself. I just do what I can when I can.”

And that was a nice thought. Bucky was pretty sure he’d been thinking the same thing when he’d been sitting in the C-17. And now here he was. But Steve was smiling at him, so he didn’t air that thought.

“Yeah, I guess so. Did you call the cops?”

Steve rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, they said they’d call if they needed someone to ID the guys, but nothing yet. But not like I’d really know—“, Steve pulled out something from his jacket pocket, “—not sure if the warranty covers violent assholes.”

It looked like the phone Bucky had seen him using the other day. Or at least, it probably was if it hadn’t been smashed with a hammer. Or a boot. Bucky felt a little sick looking at it.

“Did one of them do that?”

“Not on purpose. I think this was supposed to be what happened to my ribs but lucky I got out of the way. My phone, not so lucky.”

“Jesus.”

“You can say that again.”

Steve tucked the phone back in his pocket and picked his fork back up like everything he’d just said was no big deal. What had he said? Just another Friday night. Bucky looked back down at his own meal. The red sauce had started to cool and small clumps of reddish fat had started to congeal over top. It wasn’t like he was a stranger to casual, impersonal violence but the thought of Steve sprawled across the subway floor, face busted open made his stomach curl tightly under his ribs.

“Hey Buck?” Bucky looked up at Steve. There wasn’t any blood on his face, just a small dot of sauce on his chin and at the end of his nose. Steve held up his hand a loose fist. There harsh red abrasions pooling on each of his knuckles. “I had him on the ropes, you know. Well, one of the poles, but you get the idea.”

Bucky could picture Steve getting off that same subway floor, spitting blood, and bringing up that same fist. And that was probably why Steve was saying it. Like he didn’t want Bucky to think he just passively had the crap kicked out of him. But then Steve smiled at him, kind of like when Wanda was seeing right through him. Like he knew how far Bucky’s head was up his own ass. Bucky tried out his own smile.

“Sure you did.” Steve smiled even wider and Bucky felt the coiling unpleasantness unwind just a bit.

***

And that was the nice things about being around Steve. He didn’t feel like some hulking thing that he was around Wanda, didn’t feel like the kicked dog around his family. He was just… Bucky. that’s how it went for the better part of a week when Bucky was around Steve: Steve would show and Bucky would be lurking nearby like an idiot. But Steve didn’t seem to mind that Bucky was very obviously acting like a total goon around him.

He ended up at Wanda’s most nights though but there was something else there too. Mostly she seemed distracted when he talked to her, only perking up if he mentioned anything about Steve. She smiled, kind of a shadow of how she usually did, and said “See? I told you. Good things.” And left it at that.

And he was wondering just about that when he woke up one morning and saw her pacing around the parking lot, sucking on one of her cigarettes. She almost never came down to smoke in the mornings, something about brushing her teeth. And it was strange seeing her in daylight. Her skin was paler and she looked even smaller somehow. Instead of the crisp edges cut out in the darkness of the garage, it was almost like she gradually faded away into the flat, clouded-over sunlight. She finished her cigarette and flicked to the ground, then fumbled with her bag to get out her pack. She lit again and restarted her pacing.

Bucky cleared his throat. Wanda snapped up her gaze and they locked eyes. Her eyes were huge; blown wide with something he would have said was fear in anyone else. But this was Wanda, she wasn’t afraid of him, even though she probably should be. Then the look disappeared off her face just as quickly and she said, “Oh, you’re awake.”

Her lip looked like it had almost been chewed through and her make-up was smeared across her face like she’d been rubbing her eyes.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Nothing, nothing at all really--”, she said with a laugh, even though she hadn’t said anything remotely funny. She brought up her cigarette again and smiled through the smoke at him, “--I’m not feeling very good today so I’m not going to work. I won’t have anything for you tonight.” Wanda still had the strange, pinched smile on her face. Like she was telling herself, _this is fine, everything is fine_. Someone telling themselves things were going along just fine when they obviously were not.

“That’s ok. I’m going to St. Benedict’s anyways.”

Her strained smile changed to something a little less forced and she nodded her head.

“Oh that’s right, with Steve. That’s good that you have him now.”

At that Bucky had to frown. Something larger loomed in the background of their strained small talk. Wanda looked like she was about to bolt if he made the wrong move.

“Yeah, but nothing beats piroshki, you know that.”

Wanda laughed at that but it was all wrong again. Too loud and obvious.

“Yes, you’re right about that.”

He was at a loss about what he was supposed to do here. Wanda was trying incredibly hard to make things seem normal but there was obviously something more going on. Bucky sat back against the wall and pulled his sleeping bag over his legs. Wanda started chewing at her lip, then said, “I think I found out who it belongs to.”

It took him a second to figure out what the Hell she was talking about and when it clicked, something curled unpleasantly in his gut. There was something in her tone that made Bucky nervous. He looked carefully at her as she carefully didn’t look at him.

“Yeah?”

She was fiddling with her lighter in her other hand, spinning it around between her knuckles. Everyone one of her nail beds had some kind of ragged tear and her nail polish was practically chipped off.

“But I don’t think it’s going to be very easy to find them.”

“Why’s that?”

She chewed harder at her lip. Only the edges of whatever colour she’d put on them were left. It was almost like she hadn’t come home last night, but he’d been sitting with her just a couple of hours ago. She’d been distracted then too, like she was in a hurry to go somewhere.

“Natasha was wrong. It isn’t some silly diary.”

“What is it then?”

“Well, it is a diary, but not a silly one.”

“What does that mean?”

Wanda drew in a huge, heavy breath and started to say something when she stopped herself. She looked straight at Bucky but not quite, almost like she was seeing someone else. Then she smiled again in the strange new way and shook her head.

“Forget it. I’m stressed. It was so busy yesterday and no one felt like tipping.”

“Wanda--”

She shook her head and started pacing again. Whatever was eating at her was almost like a live thing, like if he squinted he could see it crowding up underneath her skin. But there wasn’t really anything there, just Wanda doing nervous laps around the parking lot. Halfway through one of the countless loops, she started to talk again.

“You know, I thought I was going to be a singer when I finally got to America. My brother saved up all of his money to get a guitar. He’d never played one before and I only knew American pop songs and some songs our mother used to sing for us, so we were terrible—“ she said that with a smile that looked more painful than anything else, “—There were all these little newspaper ads, saying they need singers, or dancers, or nannies to come to America. That you would get a Visa and a green card. I saw them all the time, and but never really payed them any attention. But then the war came and there we were in a cramped apartment we shared with eight others, the children crying all the time. And I thought, maybe I could do this. I could go to America and live in California and marry Justin Bieber.”

She laughed this time, the same as the other strained ones from earlier. Bucky wasn’t sure if he liked where this was going. Wanda drew in a deep drag of her cigarette, hand shaking, and continued.

“But America already has enough singers, so that wasn’t what those little ads were for. My brother didn’t want me to answer any of them. He said we’d find someway over together. But another girl in our building did. Ana. She wanted to be a teacher. She was gone for a long time, then one day I saw her standing on the stairs. She was so thin, she looked like a ghost. And that night, men came through her door, dragged her out of the apartment. They threw her brother out of the window.”

She said it with such a casual tone but Bucky knew it was anything but. She went to take another drag of her cigarette but her hand was shaking too much. Bucky felt useless sitting there and listening to all of this, but he didn’t know what else to do. It seemed like Wanda wanted, or needed, to get his out.

“The power had gone out for the night, so my brother ran to the police station. But they were too late. And Ana was gone and her brother was lying broken in the street. And all of us were just standing on the stairs just watching it happen. I saw the men in the market the next day. They were smoking and laughing with some of my neighbours.”

She stopped talking then and just stood in the middle of the parking garage, shaking. Her face was almost white underneath her day-old make-up. Bucky wanted to say something, anything, but everything just seemed to get caught up somewhere in his throat. He didn’t have the first clue on where to even start with something like that, so he sat as still as possible and waited to Wanda to say something else. After a long, drawn out while, Wanda flicked her burned out cigarette under a car and looked over at Bucky.

“Beni doesn’t tell me why he doesn’t like Natasha. But when she holds her cup of coffee I can see the marks on her hands. A little skull, a knife. I’ve seen those on some of the men back in Sokovia and some here too. All I do is fill her coffee cup and bring her paprikash, and she is kind to me. So what is to be afraid of?”

It threw Bucky for a loop for a second at the change in topic, but that just seemed to be how this conversation was going down. But then what Wanda said actually clicked. He even felt a little sick.

“I don’t think it’s what she’s done, but what she could do.”

Wanda smiled at him but it wasn’t quite a smile. It was sarcastic and a little cruel and looked strange on her face, but not unnatural.

“Anyone is capable of doing anything, James. And Natasha chooses to be kind to me. That’s a lot more than what most people choose.”

It was a cold punch to the gut, thinking about that. His hair fell in a greasy curtain against his face as he looked down at his lap. All he managed was a weak, “yeah”.

“James--“ she waited until he looked back up to continue, “—promise me that you’ll choose something better than this.” A

ny other time, he’d at least have some kind of reaction to that. It wasn’t exactly like anyone else had put him here but it didn’t really feel like he had much of choice in it anyways. But there was something about the way Wanda was looking at him now that pinned him in place. It felt like there was something horribly final about what she said, like she was leaving him with one last little piece of wisdom, however weird it was.

“Wanda, what is going on?”

She drew in a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and nodded a few times like she was trying to convince herself of whatever she was about to say. Then she smiled at him, nothing like the strained ones from earlier.

“Nothing I haven’t chosen, I think.”

Whatever the hell the meant. Bucky opened his mouth to say exactly that but she held up her hand.

“I’m going back to bed. I’ll see you later.”

And with that, she turned on her foot and stomped her way back up the stairs, leaving Bucky blinking like an idiot at her back.

***

What Wanda said just wedged its way into him for the rest of the day. It was there when he stood in line for the free coffee in the park and when he ducked under the awning of a bodega to wait out the newest rain shower. He just kept running it over and over in his mind. She’d looked so scared, but so tired. It made him feel awful but he didn’t know what he could do for her. She hadn’t asked for his help, so what the Hell was he supposed to do? Stand outside her apartment like some kind of sad dog, hoping that she’d let him inside and help? No, definitely not.

Obviously something had come up with that dumb fucking diary she’d latched onto and somehow Natasha was involved. It all circled vaguely around in his mind. It wasn’t exactly like Wanda had given him any kind of clue to whatever she was really talking about. He was so caught up in it, he didn’t realize he’d wandered his way over to St. Benedict’s until there was a plate of salad in his face. Bucky flinched back, then looked up to see Steve grinning down at him, his floppy bangs falling over his eyes.

“Salad for you thoughts?”

It was probably one of the worst jokes Bucky had ever heard, but it was so far from the bullshit spinning around in his head that Bucky couldn’t help the strangled laugh that punched out of him. Steve’s grin shifted into a look of confusion.

“Wow, so was a salad jokes are what do it. Good to know.”

Bucky managed to get a grip on his higher functions, shut his mouth, and took the plate Steve was still holding out to him. Steve settled down beside him and started to dig into his own plate, kindly ignoring Bucky having a slight meltdown.

“Sorry, it’s been—“

And he didn’t really know how to end that sentence. A long day? A long life? Who the fuck knew. Steve nudged Bucky’s knee with his own.

“A long day or something?”

Bucky felt himself smile despite himself.

“Yeah, something.”

Steve nodded like that was an acceptable answer and Bucky was happy to leave it at that. What was he supposed to do, tell Steve that some girl he sometimes fed him take-out and really knew nothing about was acting weird? He hadn’t told Steve about Wanda, and he wasn’t sure where to start on that. Or if he should. Steve would undoubtedly stick his nose into that, and that was in no way something Bucky was willingly going to expose Steve to. But Steve didn’t seem to be sticking his nose anywhere, just quietly eating his dinner next to Bucky like that was all that was needed here. Nothing to fill the awkward silence. So of course Bucky had to go and ruin it.

“It’s been kind of a weird day so far.”

“Weird how?”

And hadn’t he literally just been thinking of how he wasn’t going to get Steve involved in this? But how else was he going to parse this out? He couldn’t talk to Wanda, since she was in the middle of the whole thing. Bucky scrubbed his face his hand and stared down at the salad in his lap.

“I think someone I know has gotten themselves into some deep shit, and I don’t know how to get them out.”

Steve tapped his plastic fork against his plate for a few moments, then said, “How deep is this shit?”

“Not sure, but I think it’s pretty deep.”

Steve took a bite of his salad and chewed it slowly, like he was thinking through this. He finally swallowed and said, “Well, you already know what my tried and true method is.”

Bucky wanted to laugh at that, mostly because the thought of him swinging his way into Wanda’s apartment and booting that fucking diary out of her window was the first thing he could think of. But then he saw the shadow of Steve’s still healing black eye and very suddenly didn’t feel like laughing at all.

“I don’t think that’s going to work.”

Steve shrugged.

“Well, worth a shot. Is your friend ok?”

“Yeah—“, he’d watched her go back into the building and it wasn’t like she’d really told him anything at all. But that didn’t stop him from having a horrible, creeping feeling that something huge and terrible was hovering just out of sight, “—but I’m not sure if it’s going to stay that way.”

“Well, if she’s got you in her corner, I’m sure she’ll be just fine.”

And coming from anyone else, Bucky probably would have laughed in their face. Who even said stuff like that anymore? But Steve wasn’t kidding and already Bucky could hear that Steve meant every word of it. Bucky stared down at his salad, face burning, and mumbled, “I don’t know about that.”

Steve nudged at Bucky’s leg again.

“I’m pretty sure half the trouble I get into is because I’m scrawny. People think they can push me around easier. If I looked like you, I probably wouldn’t get punched half as much as I already do.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s mouthing off that actually gets you punched.”

Steve shrugged like he’d heard it before.

“Yeah, that too probably. But if your friend has you for back up, I’m sure things will go ok—“ Steve then took a deep breath and rubbed his hands against his thighs, “—and speaking of back up, I was talking to Sam the other day and he said I needed a sensible influence in my life."

“What does that mean?”

“WEll, I finally didn't draw the short straw at dinner, so I don't have to do the dishes."

Bucky wasn’t sure where this was going.

“That’s… good?”

“Yep, means I’m probably going to head back to my place and I dunno, I thought I might need a chaperone for the walk home tonight.” It was one of the least subtle things Bucky had ever heard but just for a moment, he had no idea what Steve was talking about. 

Then, "oh--"Bucky was far, far outside the realm of a 'sensible influence'. But he wasn't about to let Steve actually know that, "--I think I might know a guy."

It was a little awkward at first. Bucky had about a foot on Steve and Steve’s steps kind of scuttled along. Twice Bucky had to remind himself to keep it slow. He didn’t say anything to Steve because he could already imagine how that would go. It wasn’t like Steve had little man syndrome, but that didn’t mean he wasn't stubborn.

Then, about three blocks away from St. Benedict's, Steve’s face just kind of shifted strangely and Bucky was pretty relieved that it wasn’t directed at him. Bucky followed Steve’s glare to a guy standing halfway down the block. He didn’t stand out to Bucky at all really. Just a guy stuffed into some mid-price suit, smoking. But obviously that wasn’t all he was because Steve looked like he was about to go nuclear.

Some kind of little alarm started screaming at Bucky from a distant place in his mind and he reached out to grab Steve’s elbow. But Steve wasn’t beside him anymore. He was stomping his way towards the guy and Bucky thought, _oh, this is going to go well_. Which of course it didn’t, not at all. Because Steve was in the guy’s face and then the guy got in Steve’s. Bucky caught enough to know that this was one of the guys who beat up Steve the other day. And now Bucky was in the guy’s face and when the guy poked his fingers, still with the cigarette in between his fingers, into Bucky’s chest. There was no shoving. Bucky’s hand already in a fist, but then he saw the little tattoos on his hands and that made him pause. Little etchings, none of them the stupid ones that lots of the kids seemed to all be getting. It made him think of Wanda.

And he paused long enough that he wasn’t expecting the shove. He didn’t fall over, not exactly. It was just suddenly his legs felt a little weak and all they needed was a little push and down he went, sprawling backwards onto the sidewalk. But as he turned to get up, another thing made him pause.

There was a pair of boots. Looking down at him was a woman with a shock of red hair cut just below her chin, curling from the moisture. A black motorcycle helmet was under one arm, a pair of red leather gloves in the other hand. She looked at him with the same intensity that Steve had but her gaze was something else entirely. When Steve looked at Bucky, it was with all of his attention, like you mattered, like you were important. This was like she already knew every little thing about him and there was nothing he could do about it.

Then she was walking around him and over to other guy. As she passed by him, Bucky saw the small tattoos on her hands- a skull, a crown, a dot in the middle of a circle. An alarm bell started ringing in the back of his mind. He knew this place was bad news, but there was a deep feeling to the dread building up now. The other guy spluttered out a slightly panicked greeting as she approached,

“Наталья Романова, прошу прощения—”

She stopped right in front of him, eyeing him disinterestedly.

“I’m not interested in an apology, Vovochka. But maybe Nikolai would be, since it’s his business you’re throwing people around in front of.”

Her accent was perfectly neutral, no trace of Russian, or any kind of local inflection. Just the kind of boring standard American English that was on CNN. There was something wrong here and Bucky could feel it circling just out of sight. The other man looked panicked for a just a moment, then said “No, of course not. Nikolai is very busy today, he did not say you were coming—“

“He’ll make time for what I have to tell him.”

The woman stuck the helmet into Vladimir’s chest and walked around him, up the steps, and into the restaurant. Vladimir was left holding her helmet, looking like for all the world he was about to shit himself. Then like he was remembering himself, he looked back at Steve and Bucky and said in a strained voice, “You two, just fuck off, yeah?”

The hovering sensation of doom touched ground somewhere deep under his ribs. Bucky looked at the name of the restaurant glowing above Vladimir’s head and heard Wanda say in her heavy accent _Trans-Siberian Restaurant, you think they would have a nicer card for such a fancy name_. And the man at the door had called the woman Natalia Romanova.

Natasha.

The confines of the coming disaster were shoring themselves around him and all at once he felt like curling up on the sidewalk and like he’d just been pumped full of about ten gallons of coffee. Bucky struggled to his feet then grabbed Steve’s elbow, just as Steve said, “The Hell we are—“

Bucky had been good at what he did. Calm and easy authority was what was officially in his file. He hadn’t felt like that in a long time, he tried to draw on some of that now.

“Yeah we are actually. Right now.”

Steve shot an angry glare but Bucky ignored that. He nodded his head at Vladimir and said, “Прошу прощения”

Then he was tugging Steve away. They got about halfway down the block when Steve managed to shake off Bucky’s grip and dig his heels in.

“What the Hell was that? And since when do you speak Russian?”

“Steve—“already the calm authority in his voice had left him, “—I have to go. Please don’t do anything stupid.”

He must sound as desperate as he felt because the anger on Steve’s face vanished and now he was looking at Bucky with wide-eyed concern.

“What’s going on?”

“I have to go, I’m sorry.” And with that he pivoted on his foot and jogged in the opposite direction. Wanda would probably still be back at her apartment, probably on her way home or already there. He could run it in about ten minutes, depending on the lights.

“Buck, wait!”

Bucky looked over his shoulder at Steve who was jogging after him. Bucky didn’t stop, just turned around and started walking backwards.

“Steve, I know you’re the first one to throw yourself into the line of fire, but this isn’t something you wanna be involved with.”

“Buck, whatever it is, let me help you.”

Bucky drew in a deep breath and thought about the answers. Steve still looked concerned, but there was a hard, defiant line to his features that made him think of Wanda earlier. And now things were about to go so, so horribly wrong if they hadn’t already. He thought of Steve looking like for all the world he was about to burn the whole world down for something he knew nothing about, but all the name of helping out Bucky.

And suddenly he felt an acute wave of crushing sadness roll over him that the two people he knew in this city weren’t just the most stubborn, but something else entirely. They were two of the best people he’d ever met and he was letting them both down. “

Ok. But we’ve gotta move fast.”

Steve frowned a little as he nodded.

“Yeah, ok, let’s go.”

It only took about six blocks before Bucky looked over at Steve to see him leaning against a lamppost clutching his chest. Bucky stumbled over his feet and ran back. His face was stained an angry red and his exhales were coming out in an awful wheeze. Steve was pawing at his jacket, trying to get something out of the pocket. Bucky reached in and grabbed the chunk of plastic. An inhaler.

“Steve--” Steve fumbled it out of Bucky’s hands and took a deep inhale. On the exhale, he glared at Bucky and said,

“It’s fine, just go. I’ll catch up, but—“ Steve grabbed his elbow in an almost iron grip. Bucky looked back at Steve. “—be careful, ok?”

Even in the depths on his panic, it settled somewhere in him, the grip on his elbow, Steve staring right at him and sounding like for all the world that he meant it. Bucky swallowed, then nodded.

“Yeah, you too.”

In between worrying about Steve and worrying about Wanda, the rest of the run was nothing but a haze of panic. Suddenly Wanda’s building was in front of him. The back door was sticking open as usual and Bucky took the stairs two at a time. Wanda was probably fine and all this would be for nothing. Wanda was smart. She’d be fine. This was just his overactive imagination. They’d all have a good laugh about this later. Remember that time Bucky lost his fucking mind? But for now there was no room for any of those kinds of thoughts.

He barely had enough mind to breath through the burning in his legs and the sharp pressure building behind his eyes. What floor did she even live on? What had she said once? _The twelfth-floor is the penthouse, don’t you know? I can see all of the industrial yard right from my couch_.

He glanced at the next number on his way by. Seven. Jesus Christ. He hauled himself up the next set of stairs, still repeating the useless mantra of everything is fine. Then on his way past the tenth floor, someone screamed. Bucky froze for a moment and looked up the rest of the stairs. His lungs were on fire and his calves had long ago turned from cramps to two painful rictuses of agony.

Everything was not fine.

A door overhead banged open and someone sprinted down the steps. There was another yell, this time low and angry. But the rapid steps continued until suddenly Wanda was at the top of the next flight of stairs. She skidded to a halt and stared at Bucky with huge, terrified eyes. There was a large splash of blood across her face and red in her teeth. She blinked at him, huge and terrified.

She started to say something, but Bucky barked at her, “Just go!” Thundering steps joined them on the stairs. Wanda was still staring at him, mouth hanging open. Bucky lunged upwards and grabbed Wanda’s hand. It was tacky with blood and his grip almost slipped. He yanked at her and in an instant, she was moving past him and running down the stairs. As long as it took him to get up the stairs, it took no time at all going down. They were suddenly running out the back door and into the damp chill of the alley. He registered the relief from the smothering heat of the stairwell for only a moment before settling back into the current disaster.

Wanda was half way down the alleyway already, miles ahead of him, backpack bouncing as she disappeared around the corner. Closer now were the steps that had followed them down the stairs. He pivoted and ducked behind one of the dumpsters. Blood pounded against his temples and made the pressure behind his eyes even sharper. He’d run all the way here and he didn’t even have a plan. And he’d left Steve struggling for breath a few blocks from here.

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut. God he was the fucking worst.

The back door banged open. Bucky drew in a deep breath. He might be the fucking worst, but that made him good at the next step at least. The quicker of the two men ran straight into the garbage can lid Bucky held out. His head made an awful, final noise against the metal. The other man wasn’t far off and he drew to a halt. He didn’t hesitate though, just brought up his knife. There was a stream of deep red running out from the other hand, the same red that had been in Wanda’s teeth. They eyed each other for a moment, then Bucky lunged forward. This man was quicker than the other one and his knife came up and around the lid, slitting through the rain and just a hair’s breadth from Bucky’s face.

Bucky threw himself backwards and the man’s knuckles brushed against his jacket. Bucky’s hand was even, precise, no sway, no hesitation. That he was good at violence was no surprise to him. He had been steeped in it for years. But as easy as the movements came back to him, he was still one arm down, hungry, and exhausted from his furious sprint over here.

So when Bucky blinked and the man’s fist was suddenly in his face, he was hardly surprised. Adrenaline and element of surprise could only sustain someone for so long. The punch was followed by a solid, agonizing kick to Bucky’s side. He went down hard onto the ground. The man towered over him and Bucky watched in slow motion as the man raised his leg. Bucky lurched up and held on tight to it. The man stumbled and fell into a deep puddle with a surprised roar.

Bucky crawled up and straddled the thrashing man and hit him once, twice, then there was an agonizing crack as the man’s cheekbone shattered. The man wasn’t making any more noise. There was just the roar of the rain and Bucky’s ragged breaths filling up the alleyway.

Bucky rolled off the man with a groan and got as far as shakily getting to his hands and knees. He tried to spit blood gumming up in his mouth out, but his ribs ached when he inhaled, so all he managed was opening his mouth and watching the blood ooze out, down his chin, and slowly stretched towards the ground. It touched the grimy asphalt underneath him and mixed together with the oily grime on alley floor.

He thought about getting up. Saw himself doing it, walking to the end of the alley. He thought about it a few times, but he stayed firmly on his hands and knees, breathing through the newly acquired aches and pains. Wanda was out there somewhere, probably still running. If she had any luck, she would have run into Steve, but Bucky hadn’t had the time to tell her to look for him. He hadn’t had much time to do anything at all, except what came naturally to him. Which was why he was here no bleeding at the ground instead of with her and actually doing something useful.

He looked back at the two men. The one he’d hit first still wasn’t moving and a sick feeling curled up in Bucky’s gut. He tore his eyes off the unmoving man and to the other one. The man was starting to stir, groaning lowly into the rain. It was enough to get Bucky moving. The three of them weren’t going to have another fight for a while, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have buddies to come join in. He crawled back over the man and dug through his jacket, avoiding the man’s feebly attempts to paw at him. Wallet, no ID but a stack of twenties. No gun, probably because they wanted to keep it a quiet job. Bucky grabbed at the man’s bitten hand. Ugly little tattoos dotted each of his fingers, the largest being the Virgin Mary on the back of his hand.

He threw the man’s hand back against him, pocketed the money, and chucked the empty wallet back at the man. Bucky leaned heavily against the slimy brick wall and stumbled out towards the street light. Wanda was long gone now, at least she would be if she was sensible and wanted to keep that smart head on her shoulders. The street was mostly deserted this late at night and with the rain still coming down heavy. A couple huddling under an umbrella shuffled by him. Jesus his head hurt.

Still no Wanda and the split in his face made it difficult to see. Rainwater and blood streamed down his face and over his eyes, gumming up his eyelids. He ran his hand quickly over his face and hair, pushing the long strands back and the blood and water out of his eyes. Fuck. He stumbled and dropped to his knees, got back up again. The people passing him probably thought he was drunk. Another person passed by him and quickly dodged around him with an anxious ‘whoa’.

Then-- “Bucky?”

And there was Steve. Steve with his huge blue eyes and his floppy bangs plastered to his forehead. His face was blotchy and red and his chest was heaving, but goddamn, he looked like he was practically glowing, all backlit by the streetlight above. Bucky’s legs quit on him again and back down he went. Steve was suddenly there, kneeling in front of Bucky with his hands on Bucky’s face, his shoulder. Bucky made the moment even sweeter by saying, “Fuck” to which Steve replied, “Holy fucking shit”.

Talk about two fucked up peas in a fucked up pod. Steve pushed back the hair that had fallen over Bucky face, eyeing up Bucky’s rearranged face.

“Jesus Christ, I leave you alone for five minutes. What the Hell happened?”

He squinted over Bucky’s shoulder trying to get a look behind him. Bucky gripped the front of Steve’s jacket. It wasn’t safe to be out in the open like this. People weren’t going to notice a bloody homeless guy, but they’d notice Steve.

“We gotta go Steve.”

Steve opened his mouth to argue, probably, but there must have been something on Bucky’s face that made him hesitate. So instead of being difficult, he nodded and moved to Bucky’s side.

“Ready?” Steve hauled Bucky up and they stumbled forward. Bucky could feel the unsteadiness in Steve’s legs but even still, Steve moved them forward with only a slight stumble in his step. Bucky tightened what was left of his right arm around Steve’s shoulders. It was a mistake dragging Steve into this. Bucky could already tell Steve wasn’t going to let this lie. He was going to make this his business and there would be nothing Bucky could do about it.

The walk to the police station was some kind of fever dream to him. He knew they walked there, he knew that, but it still was a harsh shock when they stepped through the door to the harsh, clinical light of the station. A couple of the uniforms stared at Bucky and he already knew this was going to be a bad idea. Here was some homeless guy coming in to tell them all about their friend’s crazy diary getting hunted down by the fucking bratva. Not far fetched at all. Bucky grabbed Steve’s jacket and pulled him to a halt.

“I can’t do this.”

Steve thought about it for about two seconds, then said, “Buck, we kind of have to—“ there was something on Bucky’s face that made him stop. He took Bucky in, then continued, “I’ll talk to them, just wait here.”

Bucky nodded and released Steve’s jacket. He watched Steve take off down to the reception.

He turned to lean against the wall and try to at least start cataloging just exactly what his injuries were. But then he caught a glimpse of what was on the opposite wall. There were so many posters it felt like a wave rising over him. Young women, all of them and none of them looked like Wanda. Their photos were carefully picked family photos, the women and girls smiling at the camera as if that was what they were like all the times. Dozens of girls just gone, left on a corkboard in the corner of a police station. Bucky felt sick.

He started at it a long while, then Steve’s voice cut through. Bucky swallowed his nausea and looked over to where Steve was leaning over the desk and into the face of an incredibly unimpressed cop. Bucky couldn’t hear what she was saying, but her raised eyebrow and puckered lips told him it wasn’t anything that Steve wanted to hear. A few of the other uniforms were now drifting towards the scene. God, and he’d left Steve to clean up his bullshit. But before anything to horrible happened, Steve was storming back down the corridor towards him.

“They said they already responded to the domestic disturbance, found nothing.”

“What?”

“That’s what they said, then they thanked me for being a diligent citizen.”

And thankfully they were already outside because Bucky felt his legs stop working and he did a slow kind of slide against the brick wall of the building. Steve kneeled down and looked at him.

“Hey, we’re going to find her.”

And seeing the absolute seriousness in Steve’s face, his intensity, made Bucky think that yes, they were.

“Yeah, ok.”

***


End file.
